A Canadian Heroine eBook

“And he claimed charity from you because of
your connection with Canada?”

“Exactly. Having no other plea. I
was right, madame: you know this man?”

“He was my bitterest enemy!” she answered,
half rising in her vehemence. “But for
him I might have had a happy life.”

Father Paul looked shocked.

“Forgive me,” he said, in a troubled voice,
“I am grieved to have spoken of him.”

“On the contrary, I am thankful you did so.
If I had met him by chance in the street, I believe
he could not change so much that I should not know
him, and he—­”

She stopped, then asked abruptly,

“You did not mention me?”

“Most assuredly not.”

“Yet he might recognise me. What shall
I do?”

She was speaking to herself, and not to her companion
now, and she looked impatiently towards the pier where
Lucia was slowly coming back.

Presently she recovered herself a little, and asked
a few more questions about Bailey. She gathered
from the answers that he had been some time at Bourg-Cailloux,
getting gradually more poverty-stricken and utterly
disreputable. That he was now wandering about
without a home, or money even for gambling. She
knew enough of the man to be certain that under such
circumstances he would snatch at any means of obtaining
money, and what means easier, if he only knew it, than
to threaten and persecute her. And at any moment
he might discover her—­her very acquaintance
with Father Paul might betray her to him. She
cast a terrified look over all the groups of people
on the beach, half expecting to see the well-remembered
features of Bailey among them; but he was not there.
Close by her, however, stood Lucia, and at a little
distance the carriage, which had been ordered to fetch
them, was just drawing up.

CHAPTER XXII.

Mrs. Costello said nothing to Lucia on their way home
about Bailey. She sat in her corner of the carriage,
leaning back and thinking despairingly what to do.
Her spirits had so far given way with her failing
health that she no longer felt the courage necessary
to face annoyance. And it was plainly to be feared
that in case this man discovered her, he would have
no scruples, being so needy and degraded, about using
every means in his power to extort money from her.
Undoubtedly he had such means—­he had but
to tell her story, as he could tell it, and
not only her own life, but Lucia’s, would be
made wretched; the separation from Maurice, which
she was beginning to hope might be only temporary,
would become irrevocable—­and, what seemed
to her still more terrible, there would be perpetual
demands from her enemy, and the misery of perpetual
contact with him. To buy off such a man, at once
and finally, was, she knew, utterly beyond her power—­what
then could she do?

When they were at home, and the door of their sitting-room
safely closed, she turned anxiously to Lucia,